Learn how to set HTML page properties and CSS properties, such as font, background color, and background image properties, for your Dreamweaver page.

For each page you create in Dreamweaver, you can specify layout and formatting properties using the Page Properties dialog box (File > Page Properties). The Page Properties dialog box lets you specify the default font family and font size, background color, margins, link styles, and many other aspects of page design. You can assign new page properties for each new page you create, and modify those for existing pages. Changes you make in the Page Properties dialog box apply to the entire page.

Dreamweaver gives you two methods for modifying page properties: CSS or HTML. Adobe recommends using CSS to set backgrounds and modify page properties.

Merk:

The
page properties you choose apply only to the active document. If
a page uses an external CSS style sheet, Dreamweaver does not overwrite
the tags set in the style sheet, as this affects all other pages
using that style sheet.

Set CSS page font, background color,
and background image properties

Use the Page Properties dialog box to specify
several basic page layout options for your web pages, including
the font, background color, and background image.

Specifies the default font family to use in your web pages.
Dreamweaver uses the font family you specify unless another font
is specifically set for a text element.

Size

Specifies the default font size to use in your web pages.
Dreamweaver uses the font size you specify unless another font size
is specifically set for a text element.

Text Color

Specifies the default color to render fonts with.

Background Color

Sets a background color
for your page. Click the Background color box and select a color
from the Color Picker.

Background Image

Sets a background image. Click the Browse button, then browse
to and select the image. Alternatively, enter the path to the background image
in the Background Image box.

Dreamweaver tiles
(repeats) the background image if it does not fill the entire window,
just as browsers do. (To prevent the background image from tiling,
use Cascading Style Sheets to disable image
tiling.)

Repeat

Specifies how the background image will be displayed on the page:

Select the No-repeat option to display the background image only once.

Select the Repeat option to repeat, or tile, the image both horizontally and vertically.

Select the Repeat‑x option to tile the image horizontally.

Select the Repeat‑y option to tile the image vertically.

Left Margin and Right Margin

Specify the size of the left and right page margins.

Top Margin and Bottom Margin

Specify the size of the top and bottom page margins.

Set HTML page properties

Setting properties in this category of the
Page Properties dialog box results in HTML rather than CSS formatting
of your page.

Sets a background image. Click the Browse button, then browse
to and select the image. Alternatively, enter the path to the background image
in the Background Image box.

Dreamweaver tiles
(repeats) the background image if it does not fill the entire window,
just as browsers do. (To prevent the background image from tiling,
use Cascading Style Sheets to disable image
tiling.)

Background

Sets a background color
for your page. Click the Background color box and select a color
from the Color Picker.

Text

Specifies the default color to render fonts with.

Link

Specifies the color to apply to link text.

Visited Links

Specifies the color to apply to visited links.

Active Links

Specifies the color to apply when a mouse (or pointer) clicks
on a link

Left Margin and Right Margin

Specify the size of the left and right page margins.

Top Margin and Bottom Margin

Specify the size of the top and bottom page margins.

Set title and encoding properties for a page

The Title/Encoding options in Page Properties let you specify the document encoding type that is specific to the language used to author your web pages, The Title/Encoding options also let you specify which Unicode Normalization Form to use with that encoding type.

From the Page Properties panel, select Title/Encoding. You can configure the following options:

Title: Specifies the page title that appears in the title bar of the Document window and most browser windows.

Document Type (DTD): Specifies a document type definition. For example, you can make an HTML document XHTML-compliant by selecting XHTML 1.0 Transitional or XHTML 1.0 Strict from the pop‑up menu.

Encoding: Specifies the encoding used for characters in the document. If you select Unicode (UTF‑8) as the document encoding, entity encoding is not necessary because UTF‑8 can safely represent all characters. If you select another document encoding, entity encoding may be necessary to represent certain characters. For more information on character entities, see www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html.

Reload: Converts the existing document, or reopens it using the new encoding.

Unicode Normalization Form: Enabled only if you select UTF‑8 as a document encoding. There are four Unicode Normalization Forms. The most important is Normalization Form C because it’s the most common form used in the Character Model for the World Wide Web. Adobe provides the other three Unicode Normalization Forms for completeness. In Unicode, some characters are visually similar but can be stored within the document in different ways. For example, “ë” (e‑umlaut) can be represented as a single character, “e‑umlaut,” or as two characters, “regular Latin e” + “combining umlaut.” A Unicode combining character is one that gets used with the previous character, so the umlaut would appear above the “Latin e.” Both forms result in the same visual typography, but what is saved in the file is different for each form. Normalization is the process of making sure all characters that can be saved in different forms are all saved using the same from. That is, all “ë” characters in a document are saved as single “e‑umlaut” or as “e” + “combining umlaut,” and not as both forms in one document. For more information on Unicode Normalization and the specific forms that can be used, see the Unicode website at www.unicode.org/reports/tr15.

Include Unicode Signature (BOM): Includes a Byte Order Mark (BOM) in the document. A BOM is 2 to 4 bytes at the beginning of a text file that identifies a file as Unicode, and if so, the byte order of the following bytes. Because UTF‑8 has no byte order, adding a UTF‑8 BOM is optional. For UTF‑16 and UTF‑32, it is required.